


for all that it's worth (i would have loved you till the end)

by Atlanova



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alice Cooper needs a hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, FBI Charles doesn't exist, Hurt/Comfort, Sweetwater River (Riverdale), and maybe season 4, but i'm quite proud of it anyway, falice one shot, i forgot why i actually wrote this, it was like a year ago, slight canon divergence from season 3, their son really did die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23824267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atlanova/pseuds/Atlanova
Summary: “When Jug called me, you … hell, he said you weren't breathing. I thought I was gonna lose you."“So did I."___________Edgar finally realizes who Alice really is, and decides to deal with her with the help of Sweetwater River. Afterwards, Alice struggles to come to terms with what happened to her.{Falice hurt/comfort one shot, set some time during S03}
Relationships: Alice Cooper & FP Jones II, Alice Cooper/FP Jones II
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	for all that it's worth (i would have loved you till the end)

**Author's Note:**

> hey folks! i wrote this fic last summer, and i forgot about it until i recently found it in my documents. this is my first post in the riverdale fandom, and i've got a short falice multichapter planned too, so feedback would be greatly appreciated!
> 
> hope you enjoyyy :)
> 
> {disclaimer: i do not own riverdale or any of its characters. title of the fic is taken from the song 'cold' by novo amor}

Her sockless and somehow bruised heels thump on the cold floor with every bump the van speeds over. Alice groans and tries to open her eyelids, but they feel so heavy. Agony shoots through her head, and there is a grogginess wading in her blood that makes everything spin. 

Her wrists throb and she can feel a tight material - perhaps rope - bind them. _Too tight_. Why they didn't tie her feet together too is a mystery to her. 

A cold tear slips from her eye. Awful things have happened to her in the past; hell, she lost her son. But this feels … like her last moments. The weakness in her body, she thinks, will betray her. 

A tiny window in the roof serves as a tiny source of moonshine. But it is murky, so her eyes struggle to properly adjust to the darkness. Every few seconds, she will force her drained eyelids open, and through the slats - before they fall shut again - she will see the heavy padlock on the van door. She will see guns lined up along the wall.

Her head is still extremly muzzy from whatever drug Edgar and his pitiless henchmen injected into her, and she fails to remember her own name. She also thinks that a van is a strange place to keep guns. 

Some minutes - or it could be hours - later, her stomach churns violently as the van holts to an unsteady stop. She thinks she hears stones crunch beneath her, but at this point, it could just be in her mind.

She really cannot tell. 

A few doors are slammed, rocking the dismal vehicle and almost making her black out again. Before she knows it, fierce hands yank her out. Pain throbs in every inch of her body as she is thrown to the ground. 

She is almost numb to the feeling of sharp stones and blades of grass underneath her. The warm breeze of another summer night finds and soothes her skin. Her eyelids still refuse to open, preferring to let the exhaustion and drugs defeat them instead. She can only moan in attempt to scream. She can only lie there in an attempt to fight back. 

Alice's ears tell her that Edgar is swearing at her. They tell her that he is yelling something about her spirit being among the darkest and culpable he has ever seen and ….

Her ears zone out as lethargy washes over her. They drag her deadweight body across the cool sand, and it tingles her skin. A fire burns inside her and she wants to fight them but everything else tells her no. It tells her to just lie there, or she may perish from exhaustion. 

Icy water cuts into her skin and she gasps loudly. Panic begins to set in and she can't breathe. Suddenly she is able to move her limbs again. The first thing she does is scream. Hands are scratching and thumping at her, but Alice kicks out. The water splashes violently as she frantically moves her arms and legs with as much force as she can, but Edgar and his henchmen have a brutal hold on her. 

Frigid water travels down her nostrils and down her throat. She chokes and splutters every time her head manages to break through the surface. The millions of stars in the black sky are almost beckoning her.

The cold is beginning to freeze all of her limbs. She is going into shock. Her eyes are wide in fear as the icy water burns her lungs. It comes up and then back down, and she can feel her adrenaline-fuelled heart become weaker. 

Her head breaks free once more, and fighting back the hands pushing her back into the deep, she can see two figures on the riverbank. But that is the last time she experiences freedom.

For her body is pushed further and further down. The water fills her lungs. She cannot fight it anymore. Terror and physical pain is the last thing she remembers feeling before the darkness closes in. 

_____________________________________

A cough violently breaks free from her, and someone’s hands tilt her head so she won’t choke. She splutters the unforgiving water out. Her eyes open at once, and she is unsure how long she was out for. All she knows is that she can feel the strange sensation of her heart beating.

_"Jug! She-she's breathing!"_

The cold air and freezing material of her clothes cling and dig into her skin. She can see two people but she can’t place them. She gasps as her lungs try to recover, still struggles to breathe through the cold.

“Mom! Oh my god!"

That’s the first sound her ears allow her to hear. She tilts her head to the side. She can recognise her daughter watching over her as reality kicks in. She can see a boy with scruffy dark hair and a worn leather jacket on the phone, kneeling beside Betty.

“Where’s … Edgar?” she wheezes out. 

“He ran off into the woods. His lackeys, too. The police have them, though.” 

  
_____________________________________

She can’t help but sit there and just stare at the wet, stony ground. The paramedics fit an oxygen mask around her head, but all she can do is blink slowly. The green blanket around her is a great comfort, however, she still feels unsafe to an extent, as if Edgar could just break himself from those hand cuffs and drag her into the freezing cold again. But she remembers watching through heavy eyelids and in great reassurance as FP's cruiser had driven away with him in it.

There are hushed conversations around her: police officers and passers-by; Jughead and Betty to the FBI Agent in charge of the whole case. The paramedics had told her that the drugs she'd been injected with were only sedatives, and as strong as they were, she wouldn't need hospitalization. As for the cold, she had been told that surprisingly she is at no risk of hypothermia. 

She had told them that she wanted to stay here for a while, though. Perhaps it's the strange decision-making as the drugs ware off, or perhaps it's the exhaustion.

“Alice!” a familiar voice shouts. She gazes up, pulls herself from her shock-induced muse. Relief washes through her as FP Jones walks over, worry on every inch of his face. “Jug called me as soon as they pulled you out,” he says, sitting beside her on the ambulance. He places his hand on her back and takes in the sight of the oxygen mask and the green blanket and her exhausted countenance. “Jesus,” he mutters. “Are you okay?”

She swallows and shakes her head. She still feels numb. She still feels cold. She still feels tired as hell. But she no longer feels unsafe. She leans into him and he pulls her close, can feel the shock and cold radiating from her.

“They got him,” he reminds her in a whisper, tries to reassure her, his chin resting on her wet hair. She breathes deep into the oxygen mask and tilts her head slightly against his shoulder, looks up at the many white specks in the sky.

And it’s so quiet. 

The water laps gently against the tiny stones, so still and so in control and so soft and so calm. As if it’s been in that state all night, and there wasn’t someone thrashing and kicking and screaming, drowning underneath the surface only a short while ago. 

Water is a strange thing, she thinks. It is so adaptable. So changeable. So forgiving. Like the calm before a storm, the water is made up of soft, gentle, lapping waves. They can be disturbed, yes, but they reform just as easily as soon as the disturbance is taken away. And it makes her wish that she, too, was like that. Even sometimes.

She closes her eyes, allows her exhausted and shocked body to finally get its rest now that she is undoubtedly safe. “Don’t you ever do that again,” he says. She opens her eyes and looks up at him, at the relief behind his eyes but she can still see the concern. She takes the oxygen mask off. “When Jug called me, you … hell, he said you weren't breathing. I thought I was gonna lose you," FP tells her, his words like a hushed promise of some fucking lifeline.

“So did I,” she whispers, and leans her head back onto his shoulder. 

“You’ve put yourself in so much danger,” he says, almost in pained wonder as he looks at her with those damn intense eyes. The ones full of soft concern and pure honesty that destroys the barely-standing guards around her heart. 

“I had to do it, FP," she tells him. She feels him hold her closer, his strong arms an unwavering barrier of safety. It comforts her to no end. “I had to bring him down.” 

“Yeah, you did that alright,” he says. A slight smile of pride appears on his face, lifting his weary features for nothing but a flicker of a second. And then he remembers exactly why she'd got into this situation in the first place - why she is sitting on the edge of an ambulance in the first place. "What happened tonight, Al?"

She swallows, her focus momentarily stuck on a tree in the distance. Its spindly branches sway in the calm breeze, dancing gently underneath the white specks in the sky as if it feels no limits. "I … Edgar found me out. I don't know how," she begins. "Betty thinks he had some sort of scout, that maybe they overshadowed phone calls with the FBI that were already supposed to be untraceable."

His focus flickers down to her, from where it was watching the slight bustle of officers ahead of them. He notices the way her eyelids falter ever so tiredly. "Some people just have the upperhand."

Alice moves her head from his shoulder, giving him a glare that had always scared him a little, even if he will never admit it. 

He raises an eyebrow and flexes his arm from where it sits around her shoulder, as if in mock-defence. "I'm not saying it was your fault. But this thing you were doing … it was dangerous. There were always gonna be people out there to stop you." Hell, if he'd known about it, he would have stopped her, too. But not to get her off his trail - to protect her.

“I knew that when I went into it," she argues. Her eyelids slowly fall closed, in time with the gentle _woosh_ of the waves' lull. Logically, she knew beforehand that there were risks. People had warned her.

A burning tear slips down her face. "But tonight … I was fucking terrified, FP," she murmurs shakily. She feels his hand run up and down her arm. "I thought … I thought it was fine, because I'd be able to fight it. I'd dodge the bullets, metaphorically … and literally. I'd do what … what I went there to do, and then I'd get the h-hell out."

FP bites his lip, unsure what to say. First off, he hadn't seen her this emotional since she showed up at his trailer to tell him, though breathless and agonizing cries, about their dead son. The one she was so sure she had killed. The boy he didn't even realise they had given life to, until it was taken from him one day.

His first instinct is to pull her into some kind of embrace. It's a little awkward due to the way they are sitting on the edge of the ambulance, and because their kids will probably glance at them, and especially since they're yet to work out where they both are with one another. In any matter, his left hand slides up to her shoulder, his right reaching across to encircle her shaking and still-numb body. She lifts one arm to cover his hand that sits on her arm, letting her head rest somewhere around his chest and his shoulder. 

"But to …" she trails off, her breath hitching as her throat is still constricted "… to actually be under that water. To feel the life just escape from me. FP, I-" 

She is cut off by her own sobs. They are silent. The ones that are just too painful to he heard. FP shakes his head and fiercely blinks back his own tears. To hear her talk about such things like this, it breaks him. It just does. 

He shushes into her still-damp hair, whispering incoherent nonsense that neither of them can really hear. All Alice knows is that it sooths her. "You're safe now."

By some tiny, flicker of a fucking miracle, yes - she is. She knows that she very nearly died. Technically, she did. For two minutes, according to Jughead and Betty, her heart stopped. She wonders if perhaps it was even too close to be called a miracle. 

"Here, Al," FP whispers, taking the oxygen mask and placing it gently to her mouth and nose. She brings a trembling hand up to settle on the mask, nodding and breathing deeply into it. Tears still fall down her face. "You gotta take it easy, alright?"

Alice knows that she should have seen it coming, but once it did, it was all just one horrific flash. A bit like the way the birds flee and dogs' ears perk up before a tsunami. The way the waves rise higher and higher until they become one devastating weapon against a whole city. She knows that if it wasn't for Jughead and Betty, they would all be standing over her pale, washed up body.

The cries and sobs settle within her a little, and she gazes through blurry eyes to see the night sky. Stars have gathered together, and the moonshine illuminates gracious streaks onto the river's surface. 

Alice frowns and takes the mask off, recalling that she neglected to finish her story. FP can probably fill in the gaps by now, but she feels like she owes it to herself, somehow. For closure, maybe. "He came storming in to my room with a load of others. I tried to … to fight them off, but I was outnumbered." She hears FP swallow quietly. "He yelled some bullshit about how my soul wasn't pure, how … how it was scattered with … with black ash that would never fade." 

She pauses, a momentary lapse in her concentration caused by the exhaustion. And she almost doesn't want to disturb the graceful night around her with the pain of everything that was but a few hours ago. FP places a benign kiss to the top of her head.

"They shoved some kind of fabric over my mouth. All I remember is that … the smell made me feel sick. It was so strong. And then … as I was blacking out, they grabbed me," she trails off, her chest constricting again.

FP bites down the eruption of anger that he feels rise within him. Fuck, he will go down to that holding cell and beat the crap out of Edgar for what he did to Alice. 

His gaze shifts from being fixated on the miles of river ahead, to her wrists. Swallowing loudly, he slides his palm underneath the back of her hand. Her fingers slip through the gaps in his, and he almost doesn't want to look.

On both of her wrists are angry dark purple bruises. FP brushes his thumb over the damaged skin, his touch light and gentle. "That's where they grabbed you?" he asks, though it's more of a statement than anything else.

Alice nods slowly, and closes her eyes. "The next thing I knew … I was in the back of a van. They … erm, they tied my hands together," she tells him tiredly, watching as FP grazes his thumb over her knuckles. "My head was pounding and everything was blurry," she says, her voice nothing more than a whisper. "They dragged me out, along the stones and the sand. And then … I felt the water touch my toes. It woke me in an instant. Suddenly I was k-kicking and screaming but they forced me under s-so quickly, it was useless."

FP turns his head to look at her at the same moment she moves hers from his shoulder. "I didn't … I didn't know what to do," she croaks out as she looks up at him.

His eyes swim with searing unshed tears at her last words. He places both of his hands on each side of her face. "If I knew what you were doing, I'd have stopped you. 'Cause it was so dangerous." More tears fall down her face, and she is past the point of being able to hold them back. "But do you-"

"No!" she panicks and shakes her head quickly, losing control. " _No_ , FP! What if-"

"Hey, hey - listen to me," he humms, his voice almost a soft growl. He rubs his thumbs under her eyes. "No more what-ifs. What's done is done. What happened _happened_. But you're _here_."

"Just," she argues in a whisper, almost hiccuping. Tears continue to slip down her face, one after the other. 

FP finds that he has nothing to say to that. He'll never forget that she died tonight. And in spite of the fact that she survived - no matter how close it was - nothing will resolve the way his world shattered the moment Jughead told him that she wasn't breathing. He swallows and looks down, instead weaving his fingers through hers again.

"I was warned of the risks - the possible consequences; getting found out, and the … danger that could have come of it if it ever actually happened," she says, her gaze just missing his. "I stayed discreet for months. No-one suspected anything. But ... maybe that got to my head, and I … forgot that I wasn't invincible, I don't know. But I should have listened. "

FP's careful and calm gaze flickers around her slightly confused face. "You never do what anyone tells you to do anyway," he says, slight amusement in his eyes. He brushes strands of hair from her face as his intense umber eyes focus on her. "Look, people are gonna tell you that you were crazy to do all this, alright?"

"Including you?"

FP softly winks at her. "Yeah, I think that sometimes you're a complete idiot for the insane things you do," he tells her. "But, seriously, I think that ..." he trails off, his tone softening, " … I think that sometimes you're braver than this whole damn town put together, Al. And I'm proud of you," he tells her in a hushed whisper, before his forehead gently clashes with hers. "And I don't know what I would have done if I'd lost you."

A cold tear falls down her cheek, but she feels so safe in that moment. Alice understands what he must be feeling. She think so, anyway. At least, she would be the exact same if he was the one who almost drowned. "You didn't," she mumbles, blinking tiredly.

"No." He absently sways her, gently playing with her fingers. He swallows down the burning lump of consolation in his throat, before placing another lingering kiss to the top of her head. "No, I didn't."

Engulfed in the safe and warm arms of FP, Alice finds that she cannot stop her eyelids from slowly falling closed, and she allows a good kind of unconsciousness to wash over her.


End file.
